The Bishop himself has affirmed his personal belief that some narratives in the Old Testament are probably not historical.  It may fairly be asked on what principle he is prepared to evade the plain sense and intention of a doctrinal test in two cases while stigmatising as morally flagitious any attempts to do the same in a third.  For it is unquestionable that a general assent to the Articles does not mean that the man who gives that assent is free to repudiate any ’particular phrases or expressions’ which do not please him.  A witness who admitted having signed an affidavit with this intention would cut a poor figure in a law court.  And it is difficult to see how adhesion to the antiquated theory of inspiration could be demanded more stringently than by the form of words which was drawn up, as none can doubt, to secure it.  These things being so, either the accusation of bad faith applies to the treatment which the Bishop justifies in the case of the Articles and the Bible, or it should not be brought against those who apply to one clause in their vows the principle which is admitted and used in two others.

There are some honourable men who have abstained from entering the service of the Church on account of these requirements.  But there are many others who recognise that knowledge grows and opinions change, while formularies for the most part remain unaltered; and who consider that, so long as their general position is understood by those among whom they work, it would be overscrupulous to refuse an inward call to the ministry because they know that they will be asked to give a formal assent to unsuitably worded tests drawn up three centuries ago.  Dr. Gore himself would probably have been refused ordination fifty years ago on the ground of his lax views on inspiration; and the Bishops who approved of the condemnation of Colenso, who condemned ‘Essays and Reviews,’ and who would have condemned ‘Lux Mundi,’ were more ‘honest’ to the tests than their successors.  But an obstinate persistence in that kind of honesty would have excluded from the ministry all except fools, liars, and bigots.  Again, it might have been supposed that the laity also, who at their baptism and confirmation made the same declaration of belief in ‘all the articles’ of the Apostles’ Creed, and who are bidden by the Church to repeat the same Creed every week, are in the same position as the clergy.  But the Bishop again attempts to draw a distinction.  ’The responsibility of joining in the Creed is left to the conscience of the layman,’ but not to the conscience of the clergyman, nor, we suppose, of the choir.[41] This plea seems to us a very lame one.  The Church of England has never thought of imposing severer doctrinal tests on the clergy than on the laity, and assent to the Creeds is as integral a part of the baptismal as of the ordination vows.